Feature #4288

For non-standard or arbitrary method names, it would be nice to have a way to invoke them directly that doesn't require the parser to be made more complex nor require an intermediate "send" call. Groovy does this by allowing the following form:

foo."asdf"()

This syntax would make it easier to integrate with other languages that have different naming rules. For example, =!@+= is a valid operator in Scala. With this syntax, you could invoke it as

foo."=!@+=" bar

The alternative in JRuby is that we have to map such names as eq_bang_at_plus_eq, which is certainly not as elegant, or force people to use send (and force them to use :"" anyway, since :=!@+= is not a valid symbol).

It's left up for debate whether string interpolation should be allowed in this syntax. =end